Thursday, May 08, 2008

A note for "London Lite"

Folks,

Your front page headline, yesterday, is crap: no matter how well trained, a drunk with a shotgun is not a "sniper".

Sniper implies long range (not achievable with a shotgun) and accurate (although a small amount of an appropriate sedative may improve accuracy, alcohol is unlikely to be the cheat's choice - the blurring of your distance vision really does your grouping no good at all.)

6 comments:

Believe it or not I actually got a call from the Mail today over just this issue. Mark Saunders was a shooter and holder of a shotgun certificate, and apparently was using an over and under shotgun. He was also pissed out his head. There is no way in the world the police should have killed him and they did it for one reason only and I will comment in a minute on that. A 2 shot shotgun with someone trying to reload while out of their head is easy to disarm or incapacitate if they had wanted to, but they didn't. I know from experience in NI that we shouldn't be killing people like this and don't need to.

A pal of mine is a forearms officer in Manchester and he says there is an unwritten policy in the police that you kill first ask questions later because there is no possible court case from a dead man claiming, whether right or not, that he was trying to surrender but was injured or shot anyway.

If this sort of thing is allowed to be unchallenged it could be me or you or anyone next, perfectly innocent.

You think the use of lethal force in a situation like this is inevitable?

This isn't the first case like this. We have a naked man, naked and unarmed gunned down and killed. We have a man carrying a holdall with no weapon in it killed because the police thought it looked it held a gun. Jean Charles ring a bell?

There are no woundings only killings, and you can check that yourself. This suggests a policy of shoot to kill first and ask questions later, which means me, you or anyone may be killed while perfectly innocent. Now what don't you understand about that point?

As to Mark Saunders, the police knew he was using a shotgun. Most shotgun cartridges would be ineffective against a man in thick tweeds at fifty yards, so yes, let him run out of ammo. Now as SE says and he is right, if he was a sniper with a rifle that is entirely different.

Go to Google and look up 'John Stalker' and see what his remit and investigative job was in NI, and how many soldiers, and RUC and UDR, were charged. Also look up what was said at the time by Labour MP's and activists.

"This isn't the first case like this. We have a naked man, naked and unarmed gunned down and killed. We have a man carrying a holdall with no weapon in it killed because the police thought it looked it held a gun. Jean Charles ring a bell?"

None of those cases are anything like this. The naked and unarmed man was during an entry to a home where police were warned of his record. Similarly, police were warned the holdall man was armed, and he didn't comply with instructions. De Menezes was a disgrace, but the police who actually shot him bear no blame - the blame lies with the bugled identification and subsequent cover-up attempts.

"There are no woundings only killings, and you can check that yourself."

Actually, you are wrong - there's one very famous case - Stephen Waldorf. I didn't need to check, but if I had, it would have taken 5 seconds on Google.

"yes, let him run out of ammo"

Last time the police tried the 'softly, softly' approach (Brixton, a few Christmases ago) people were locked out of their homes for nearly a week, and in the end, the man set a fire, killed himself, and damaged his and others' properties!

I remember it well - my American sister-in-law was staying over at the time, and remarked, on hearing a news update 'Oh, another siege...!'. When we told her it was the same one from a few days ago, and it hadn't been resolved yet, she was nonplussed. As were we, on reflection...

No thanks - you shoot at the police, expect them to return fire. It's what we pay them for, after all.

None of those cases are anything like this. The naked and unarmed man was during an entry to a home where police were warned of his record. Similarly, police were warned the holdall man was armed, and he didn't comply with instructions. De Menezes was a disgrace, but the police who actually shot him bear no blame - the blame lies with the bugled identification and subsequent cover-up attempts.

So of course that is all fine then?

Of course they were the same; a man is dead unnecessarily.

Actually, you are wrong - there's one very famous case - Stephen Waldorf. I didn't need to check, but if I had, it would have taken 5 seconds on Google.

Are you trying to kid me on? I remember the Stephen Waldorf case very well without looking at Google. Look harder at Google and you will find that he lived by a miracle, literally. Not only that but he one of the first cases of a shooting by police in modern times in the context we are talking about here. It could be that that case was the one that saw the unwritten rule of kill first questions later.

Last time the police tried the 'softly, softly' approach (Brixton, a few Christmases ago) people were locked out of their homes for nearly a week, and in the end, the man set a fire, killed himself, and damaged his and others' properties!

So every case is different and we shouldn't generalise, as long as it fits in with your argument? We have to take cases on their merit sure, which is why I don't hold up every case as proof of wrongdoing by the police. That is entirely different to the police having a blanket kill policy, and this case was hardly the same as the man was drunk and was hardly likely to stay drunk for a week.

No thanks - you shoot at the police, expect them to return fire. It's what we pay them for, after all.

We don't pay the police to kill people. Let's hope you are not the next one walking the street with an Ipod in your ears and end up shot dead.

No thanks? You don't want to know any real facts? Blissfully unaware of anything other than your puerile assertion that the coppers are there to kill first regardless. You don't know and don't want to know what you are talking about, which is very sad.

Oh, ffs...! Look, if you don't want protection from gun-wielding maniacs because 'they are people too...' fine. I'm happy to have the police shoot, and shoot to kill, if the target presents a clear and obvious threat to life, as did Saunders.

We'll have to agree to disagree.

"I remember the Stephen Waldorf case very well without looking at Google. Look harder at Google and you will find that he lived by a miracle, literally."

Doesn't matter how. You stated 'There are no woundings only killings, and you can check that yourself'. I did, and it proved not to be true.

There have been others, I can remember some armed robbers getting shot a while back and a mention of police waiting to question them after release from hospital.

"..the man was drunk and was hardly likely to stay drunk for a week."

Yet he had a loaded shotgun and was firing it at random, and may (we are of course only speculating) have fired it at officers more than once. Should they have laughed it off as 'Ahh, only birdshot!'...?

"We don't pay the police to kill people."

Except of course, that's exactly what we do. Not routinely, not everyday, not all officers but only specially-trained and supervised officers.

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A classical liberal & modern libertarian, economically laissez faire, and a governmental minimalist. Somewhat surprised to find this puts me way to the right of Chingis Khan.
Really, really pissed off at the endemic stupidity of the British governing cliques. Sometimes lets his potty mouth get the better of him.